How and Why to buy Iota Coin

With a market cap of over $10 billion, IOTA is one of the largest cryptocurrencies in the world. Currently valued at only $3.84, IOTA is one of those cryptocurrencies that WAS regarded as one with a bright future, until something unfortunate happens; IOTA price suddenly drops as its co-founder clarifies that IOTA has no partnership with Microsoft.

But considering the race of cryptocurrencies happening on the market right now, IOTA still stands a chance.

Before we go into how to buy the cryptocurrency, we need to first understand what IOTA is.

What is IOTA?

IOTA stands for Internet of Things Application, it’s a cryptocurrency but much more different than Bitcoin. It’s now a ‘Blockchain’ cryptocurrency like Bitcoin where you need to ‘mine’ the cryptocurrency. Here are a few things that make IOTA different from all the other cryptocurrencies:

Offline transactions

Zero fees

Scalability

It’s decentralized

Bitcoin uses a blockchain architecture, but IOTA uses “the Tangle”. The Tangle solves the scalability and transaction fee issue by requiring the sender in a transaction to perform a type of “proof of work” which approves two transactions.

This way, making and verifying transactions are merged into one task. This helps make the system decentralized i.e. those making the transactions (the users) are the only ones who can affect the system. This is different from Bitcoin where there is a need to ‘mine’ Bitcoins.

The result of IOTA’s system is that its transaction speed increases as numbers of users increase. This is the opposite of what happens with blockchain cryptocurrencies which get slower as users increase. It also thus removes the need to pay miners for proof of work since the users do it themselves, therefore, there’s no transaction cost either.

These reasons alone make IOTA a very interesting cryptocurrency with many applications for the future which is why the future is bright for this currency. IOTA was only worth $0.5 on June 15. It has grown by over 600 percent in just a few months which shows other investors see potential in it as well.

With Bitcoin rapidly growing, IOTA could be one of the best alternatives to Bitcoin due to its many advantages over Bitcoin.

Although IOTA is one of the largest cryptocurrencies in the world, it’s not that easy to purchase it as is the case with other cryptocurrencies. You can’t purchase it with fiat money (Dollar, Pound, Euro etc.).

Instead, you can only purchase with Bitcoin and Ethereum. There are also not many exchanges where IOTA is available for purchase. There are two exchanges with significant volumes of IOTA. Bitfinex and Binance. Although the latter is a bit new, it has built a large user base in a short period of time and has gained the trust of many, and now ranks among the top 10 daily trade volumes of all cryptocurrency exchanges.

Bitfinex has unfortunately discontinued its services for U.S customers.

How to Buy IOTA on Binance

First, register on their website and provide all the necessary details. Be sure to set up a strong and unique password. You’ll receive a verification email after signing up.

Activate your account and then Log in.

Set up your account: After logging in, you’ll be taken to the account page to continue setting up your new account. Make sure you have 2-factor authentication enabled as it’s very important to keep your account secure on online websites like these as they are sometimes vulnerable to hackers.

Initially, the withdrawal limit will be set to the equivalent of 2 BTC (not small anymore considering its price) but that will increase as you complete Binance’s Identity Authentication.

Deposit cryptocurrency to Binance: There’s a huge variety of cryptocurrencies available to deposit onto Binance, but we are currently only interested in Bitcoin or Ethereum for IOTA. Once choosing your choice of cryptocurrency, click on deposit and then wait for the transaction to be confirmed. Once the deposit is confirmed, you can see it under available balances.

Now that you have either Bitcoin or Ethereum in your balance, you can purchase IOTA. Click on the “Exchange” button in the menu and select a market in which you would like to trade (there are many since Bitcoin and Ethereum are traded in many markets).
You can purchase IOTA by either using a market order or limit.Binance will charge 1% fee for a trade. If you place a market order, you can specify what percentage of your Bitcoin or Ethereum balance you’d like to use to buy IOTA. The market order will then buy the cheapest IOTA available and buy as much IOTA possible in the amount of Bitcoin/Ethereum you specified earlier.
Once the order has been fulfilled, you will now be able to see a separate balance for your IOTA which you can make a withdrawal from using a wallet of your choice.

How to buy IOTA on Bitfinex

It’s not much different from how you would buy it on Binance. Here’s a step by step guide:

Sign up at their website and verify your email. After that, log in and your priority should be to always secure your account. Enable 2-factor authentication to make it more secure.
Once you’ve set up your account and its security. Click deposit and choose a cryptocurrency. Again, we can only purchase IOTA through either Bitcoin or Ethereum so select one of the two.

Once you’ve gotten a Bitcoin/Ethereum balance, locate a market or trading pair on Bitfinex where you would like to trade your Bitcoin/Ethereum for IOTA.
A market order is also available on Bitfinex. You can purchase the maximum possible amount of IOTA here at current market prices as well, as shown in an image below Click on the green circle as in the image and click “Exchange buy”.

Once done, IOTA will be available in your exchange wallet.

Although other cryptocurrencies are much easier to buy, it’s not that hard to buy IOTA either. It’s just an added step if you don’t have existing balances of Bitcoin or Ethereum.

If you’d like to hold your coins off exchanges, then it’s recommended to use the official IOTA GUI Wallet Client as there aren’t that many IOTA wallets out there.

With IOTA’s distinctive qualities over other cryptocurrencies, it’s only a matter of time before it slowly grows into a giant like Bitcoin. Thus, it would be wise to invest now when the price of IOTA is small.

However, it is also advised to remain cautious and to not invest too much in IOTA as prices of IOTA and other cryptocurrencies are highly volatile. Their prices can plummet as quickly as they shoot up.

Masters in Mass Communication, the writer is a journalist, currently working for FactsChronicle.

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